The Margins
by Tierfal
Summary: A collection of short, isolated pieces venturing into various pairings, places, circumstances, tones, humors, ratings, and contexts. Gleefully spoiler-ridden.
1. Plans

**PLANS**

The helicopter blades roared in Light's ears, the _fwopfwopfwop_ of them numbing, merciless simply by virtue of its repetition, and the rhythm slowed as they touched down. Beads of sweat coalesced on Light's forehead, colder than he would have expected. Wasn't cold sweat a cliché?

Everything was a blur—the cars' lights, oscillating wildly between red and blue, reflected blindingly in countless protective helmets; the buzzing of the headset in his ear; the blinking lights on what passed for a dashboard, like varicolored stars scattered around the controls; the blinding headlights swimming on the pavement. Then came the howls of disbelief from Mogi and his father, metallic and magnified through the headset, and then L was lifting a black notebook by its corners, insatiable curiosity in every line of his body. His own excitement overwhelming him, his heart knocking impatiently against his ribs, Light snatched it away. "Let me see—"

Everything slammed into his brain at once, a wild movie on frenetic fast-forward, frames clicking by so fast that he barely had time to glimpse them, let alone weigh them for comprehension. The faces flashed before him, one by one and together, in sequence, in unison, in a wild non-order that left him reeling. A black notebook with pale lettering lay guilelessly on the rustling grass of a well-kept lawn. Two graceful hands scooped it up, flipping the cover idly open.

His hands.

A smirk took hold of Light's face, twisting his lips, irresistible, irreversible, and utterly satisfying.

All the pieces had fallen perfectly into place. Even the intricacies had proceeded without a hitch, without a _hiccup_.

_Just as planned_.

Softly, however, so softly as to be virtually imperceptible, a tiny fragment of Light Yagami protested. It was a fragment he wouldn't have thought existed anymore, a fragment he thought he'd killed with all those who had dared to stand against him—a fragment that some people might have called a _soul_.

It curled up in a corner and cried, shoulders shaking with the inconsolable sobs of the completely bereft, and its whispers struck a different tone.

_What have I done?_


	2. Screens

_Author's Note: Please smack me. I keep forgetting to credit Eltea, my bestest friend and absolutely irreplaceable beta. Worship her!  
_

* * *

**SCREENS**

There was very little to be heard but the underlying hum of the computers, the broad monitors beaming their harsh, anemic light and turning ordinary realities into a strange landscape built of silhouettes. It was a city skyline of rolling chairs and intertwining cords, of tangled wires and small ceramic plates scattered with crumbs.

L popped a jellybean into his mouth and left his thumb resting against his lips, all without ceasing to scan the endless lines that swam on the screen before his eyes. Blindly he reached for another piece of candy, and the bag crinkled. There was a faint snuffling sound to his right.

Glancing up confirmed that Light had fallen asleep, his arms folded on the keyboard, his head pillowed on them. His hair was falling in his eyes and catching in his eyelashes, and the screens cast heavy, flickering shadows on his face. He looked innocent there. Harmless. The edge of the steel handcuff that encircled his wrist was pushing into his cheek.

L returned his gaze to the screen and the words that marched across it in their perfect little rows, but his mind sent curious, probing tendrils towards Light Yagami, the young man with the peerless intellect and the faultless smile.

_Who are you, Light-kun?_ he asked, his eyes flicking from each pixelated letter to the next. _Who are you really?_


	3. Dear

**DEAR**

Matsuda hands Light an envelope sealed with a sticker in the shape of a pink rose. The front bears just his name.

He slides a finger under the adhesive, pries the sticker loose, and coaxes out a folded-over piece of stationery blanketed in his sister's clean, careful handwriting.

_Dear Light,_

_I hope everything's okay! We haven't heard from you in more than a week now, and we get really worried. With Kira out there, you never know what could happen, and we're really scared sometimes. We always ask the mailman if he's sure there's nothing from you. Mom cries when Dad calls, I don't know exactly why. It shows that he's alive, after all, right?_

_I'm doing okay in school, though it's a lot harder without my favorite tutor! Mom doesn't really bother me about it, though. I think it's because she doesn't want to think about what you'd say. Which would probably be that I'm just not working hard enough, unlike somebody I know!_

_I guess everything is okay with us, or all the important things anyway. The house is really quiet and empty, like we've shrunk, or maybe because you and I aren't yelling at each other anymore. I'm forgetting what your yell sounds like, and your laugh too._

_I miss it. I miss you._

_Be safe and please come home soon._

_Pretty please?_

_Love always, Sayu_

It is the only time in three months chained together, in three months of twenty-four-hour proximity, that L sees Light Yagami cry.


	4. Treasure

**TREASURE**

"Let's go look for treasure," eight-year-old Mello announces, hands planted on his hips, his smile dangerous (or so he hopes).

Matt looks up from the alarm clock he has disassembled. He is lying on his belly on the floor as he attempts, patiently and meticulously, to put it back together, and a glittering halo of gears and wires and assorted fragments spreads around him.

"Okay," he decides. "Where do you think it's gonna be?"

"I dunno," Mello replies bemusedly. "I bet we can find something. But we'll prob'ly have to go outside of the yard."

Matt's eyes, bright below the disheveled bangs caught in the goggles he has pushed up his forehead, glimmer with the tentative wonder reserved for the forbidden.

"You really want to?" he prompts breathlessly, and what he's actually asking is, _"Do we dare?"_

"Yeah," Mello answers stoutly. "It'll be awesome."

Matt beams. "How 'bout Near? Should we bring Near, too?"

"Nah," Mello replies immediately. "Near'll just ruin it."

Matt supposes that might be true; Near's so smart he might figure stuff out and find treasure way before they do.

"Well," he murmurs, "okay."

"Great!" Mello declares. "Let's go!"

Matt collects all the pieces of his clock and drops them into a shoebox, which he slides under his bed before standing up and brushing off his clothes.

"Okay," he concedes. "Let's go."

As they sneak towards the distant fence, casting surreptitious glances over narrow shoulders, intending to clamber over the wrought iron barrier and forge fearlessly into the world beyond, a ripple of guilt undulates through Mello's chest.

Near probably wouldn't ruin anything. In fact, he'd probably love it. But at Wammy's, you have to share _everything_. It's just the way things are.

Matt scrambles over the top of the fence and drops heavily to the ground below. Before Mello can panic, Matt's up and laughing, and Mello knows that, nice or not, he made the right choice.

Because he doesn't want to share this.


	5. Logical

_Author's Note: I saw a license plate holder just after writing this that read "Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first." Clearly, L is out there and manufacturing such items._

_IT'S SO AVANT-GARDE, OMG! …I promise I'm not trying to be pretentious; the format just sort of happened. Assume Eltea did beautiful beta work on everything I submit, unless otherwise stated. ;)  
_

* * *

**LOGICAL**

Tentative: "Ryuzaki?"

Patient: "Yes, Light-kun?"

Uncertain: "I… Can I ask you a slightly stupid question?"

Amused: "I can hardly stop you, Light-kun."

Sheepish: "Good point. Just… What do you think happens when we die?

A pause.

Neutral: "Well, logically, I imagine that the human body essentially fails, and that its failure understandably marks the end of the mind as well."

Quiet: "That is pretty logical, isn't it?"

Calm: "Yes. Which doesn't necessarily make it true."

Interested: "What do you think _is_ true?"

Faintly mischievous: "Ideally, I hope I never have to find out."

Grinning: "Another excellent point."

A silence.

Softly: "Ryuzaki?"

Softly: "Yes, Light-kun?"

Softly: "Thanks."


	6. Friend

_Author's __Note: As always, Eltea equals beta equals yay. :)_

* * *

**FRIEND**

Light opens his eyes.

It's the dreams again—the dreams of endless darkness broken only by the screaming. He can't tell what they mean, where they come from, or why, but he's been having them almost nightly since his confinement, and they won't go away.

He sits up and rubs his face, the handcuff chain clinking softly. There's no gasping involved when he wakes up from the dreams, and no cold sweat drizzling down his spine—just a persistent unnerving feeling that lingers like a chilly miasma. A _wrong_ness that is undeniable, inexplicable, depthless, and profound.

The clouds outside reflect the city's luminescence, blurrily orange with it, and the unending rows of buildings visible beyond the windowpane push roofs and spires tentatively into the night. The drapes hang absently half-open, affording Light his view of the city and dimly illuminating the quiet sumptuousness of the room. It's Ryuzaki's fault—he always forgets to shut them. He doesn't even think about things like that, things that play out on the regular plane of existence. He's so brilliant that he's transcended normalcy completely.

Light glances over at the other side of the bed, where the being—"human" is somewhat arguable, but "being" sounds fair—in question lies partly tangled in the cream-colored sheet. L sleeps like he sits: curled partway over, his knees bent and drawn up towards him, as if he's protecting something soft and vulnerable that resides in his chest.

Light looks intently at him, at this weird, peerless genius. This is the man who doubts him, who accuses him, who questions him, tests him, challenges him at every turn. This is the man who tenaciously maintains an absurd suspicion against the one person who can help to catch the real culprit—this is the man who honestly believes that Light Yagami is a mass-murderer and none the wiser.

And this is the man who calls him "friend" in spite of it.

Light tugs the blanket gently up to Ryuzaki's shoulder, smoothes it down, settles on his own side of the bed again, and lets his eyes slide shut.


	7. Puzzles

**PUZZLES**

Absently, Near shifts a mottled piece by nudging it with a fingernail, opening a different side to the small cluster he's arranged. He's getting tired of puzzles. Maybe trains next. He hasn't played with the new one much, and maybe he can set up the track to go under the bed and come back out—

Sock-muted footsteps cross the threshold and pause. Near looks up disinterestedly to find Matt.

He blinks. "Is Mello busy?"

Matt's hands are in his pockets, and he shrugs. "I dunno. Just wondered what you were up to."

Near thinks this may be an elaborate ploy of some sort, designed to lull him into a false sense of secur—

"Can I play?" Matt asks, nodding to the half-finished puzzle.

Near wants to say _No_, but that's not nice. Not polite. Not Wammy-approved.

Matt'll probably get bored in five minutes anyway.

"If you want," he concedes.

Matt lies down facing the perpendicular side of the puzzle, considers it for a moment, and then starts plucking unused pieces from the heap and turning them, his eyes moving constantly back and forth. The puzzle part of Near's brain lights up, and he sees the piece in Matt's hands, sees the base, and aligns the two.

"There," he says, pointing to the place where the edges align.

Matt sets it there, snaps it in, and smiles. "Good call," he decides amiably.

Or maybe he's _pretending_ to be amiable. Maybe this is all some intricate ru—

Matt picks up another piece and goes back to work, calmly and patiently.

Near works from his own little pile for a few minutes, and then he stops and looks shrewdly at the redhead not far away—not far away enough.

"You actually like me, don't you?" he asks, sounding more accusatory than he means to.

Matt smiles again. "Yeah," he responds. "Why not?"

Near hears the echoes of a dozen taunts and a thousand whispers. It almost hurts more when they don't say it to your face. When you know they mock you but can't even retaliate. "Because I'm smart," he paraphrases, "and weird."

Matt's smile widens into a grin. "Everybody here is," he counters. "It just depends how much."

Near lowers his eyes and adds a piece of sky. In agreeable silence, Matt returns his attention to the puzzle as well.

When they're done, Matt admires the completed picture. It's an idyllic rural scene, a panorama of rolling green hills dotted with sheep, a broad blue sky above, a smattering of tulips below, the whole thing framed protectively by a pair of stretching maple trees.

Matt's hands are folded under his chin. He disentangles one in order to push his slipping goggles further up his forehead.

"You want to play a video game?" he asks.

Near wants to say _No_, but—

On second thought… maybe he doesn't.

"What kind of game is it?" he prompts hesitantly.

"This one I just got," Matt answers, "where you're driving a train."

Near smiles.


	8. Air

**AIR**

The beds—cots, really, but they serve—are positioned on either side of Matt's apartment's single bedroom. Mello's bed cozies up with the left wall, the one set with the small window, such that the silver-blue light of the swelling moon beams over and past him. Such that he hides.

That light bathes Matt's face and gleams off of the goggles that hang wearily from the notch on the headboard. His eyelids flicker partway open, and he levers himself up on one elbow to slam a fist mercilessly into his pillow, muttering something under his breath, before he settles again.

Mello rolls onto his back and raises his left hand to touch his face. His fingertips detect the jutting spines of the intertwining scars, a pattern that grows more familiar as the days pass… but the nerves there are dead.

Mello empathizes. He almost joined them.

He traces the labyrinth of lines, wishing the dark blinded his imagination as well as his eyes. Almost curiously, he sets his whole hand over his cheek, his eye, his temple, spreading his fingers, as if covering it might make it disappear.

_Close your eyes and count to ten._

He lowers his hand and shifts onto his side, such that the scarred half lies against the pillow. You almost wouldn't be able to see it if you looked now. It's almost like it's not there.

"Matt?" he whispers, because Matt is at his most malleable when he's about to fall asleep. Because you can ask him anything, and he's too sleepy to realize when he shouldn't answer.

"Mmm?" Matt mumbles.

"Do you love me?"

Matt doesn't hesitate. "Uh huh."

For his part, Mello pauses. "Are you sure?"

"Sure as rain."

Mello pauses again. Matt doesn't make much sense when he's half-asleep, and Mello doesn't know how much he can credit anything that gets said in this condition.

Whether or not he'd like to.

"You sure about that?" he prompts.

"M'lo," Matt mumbles, "I love you like a drowning man loves air."

Then again, he might just make perfect sense.


	9. Comfort

_Author's Note: I__'m not dead! Just... unbearably lazy, and sitting here with a fat lot of homework and a small stockpile of un-uploaded drabbles..._

* * *

**COMFORT**

With a host of abandoned children too smart for their own good around, L was the go-to man for comfort. Three boys in particular always knew where to find him.

When it was Mello, he would know when the disheveled dynamo was _starting_ down the long hall that led to L's room. A deafening howl of _"EEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLL!"_ would ring out like a siren as Mello skidded around the corner and careened towards the door. L would have just enough time to unhook his toes from around the edge of his chair and place his feet on the ground before Mello was shimmying up his shins and curling up in a blond-headed ball against his chest, a hefty serving of shirt clenched in each fist.

Matt's trademark greeting was more of a rapid-fire repetition—_"L, L, L, L, L, L, L!"_—in rhythm with his thundering steps as he galloped down the hall in sneakers that were just a little too big. He would fumble with the doorknob long enough for L to minimize all the windows on his computer (the less Matt, given his burgeoning technological aptitude, knew about L's computer habits, the better) and settle cross-legged in his chair. When the door gave, of course, Matt would rocket over the threshold and leap straight into his lap.

Near, as always, took a slightly different tack.

When it was Near, L wouldn't know until the doorknob clicked and a sliver of light broken by a blinking gray eye appeared through the crack. "L?" he would whisper, waiting for the welcoming smile and the permissive nod before he took a single sock-footed step into the room. One hand in his hair, the other behind his back, he would shuffle over, climb up L's knees, and settle in as close as he could manage, leaching warmth and perhaps a bit of hope.

In all of their cases, L's abilities for rationalization were impacted by the altered sitting position, but they usually didn't ask him to reason. Fortunately, the Wammy boys had enough logic in their lives that when it came to comfort, all they were really looking for was love.


	10. This

_Author's Note: Wait, someone who's more of a Grammar Nazi than I am?! D:_

_Thanks to Eltea for making sure I didn__'t screw up MY grammar, which would have been horribly embarrassing. :P  
_

* * *

**THIS**

Light Yagami hates to admit it, but he's a little bit of a grammar freak.

Okay, he's a _lot_ bit of a grammar freak.

Well, why the hell shouldn't he be? It's all perfectly reasonable. Grammar is a system composed of rules, those rules make sense, and if they are followed, everything comes out perfectly. Occasionally, the case can be made for leniency, but generally Light believes that the rules are the rules, and that's the summary of it.

There is a long, painstakingly correct list of common grammatical errors over which he grits his teeth seemingly to no end, but the absolute _worst_ one—the one that sounds like a screwdriver scraping down a chalkboard; the one that makes him want to _kill_ people; the one that practically _burns_ him with the _indignity_ of it—is the hanging "this."

Oh, the hanging "this."

"This" is, technically speaking, most frequently employed as an adjective. _This_ hat, _this_ toy, _this_ pathetically grammatically-inept individual. It specifies, like_ blue_ hat, _robotic_ toy, or _ridiculously_ pathetically grammatically-inept individual, and, as such, must be given something about which to _be_ specific. It needs an _object_.

Light does not understand why this whole concept (_see_?) is so freaking complicated for some people.

He has no patience for people who do not even try to understand it. No patience, and no mercy, and no…

"What do you want from me, Ryuzaki?" he murmurs, nuzzling absently at a pale cheek ever-so-faintly touched with pink.

Ryuzaki smiles at him, the sweet, soft, wonderfully innocent smile that makes Light feel warm inside every time.

"This," he answers.

But…

On second thought… never mind.


	11. Home

_Author's Note: Still not dead. Still all over the place. Still stockpiling these things and trying to upload the old ones so I can upload the new ones.  
_

* * *

HOME

Shuichi Aizawa is home, for the first time in literally weeks.

It stretches his heartstrings almost to snapping to see, at intervals, that his daughter is growing up while his back is turned. There is something truly uncanny about feeling this way—like a traveler rightfully returning, and like a ghost in his own home.

He wraps his arms around his wife from behind and trails her as she bustles quietly around the kitchen, trying to hide the fact that she's forgotten how to cook for three. She's so warm. So warm, and kind, and verifiable. The scent of her, of her shampoo and her perfume and her _essence_, is a thousand times clearer and sharper and lovelier than his fading, scrabbling attempts at remembering it when he's gone.

His eyelids are weighted, and he follows her clumsily. Eventually she turns partway and gives him a little half-smile.

"Why don't you sit down for a few minutes while I finish?" she suggests without so much as a sliver of annoyance.

He smiles wearily back, and he kisses her gently, because "Thank you" is not enough, and because "This is why I love you, married you, and want you in my life forever" has too many syllables for this tired man to navigate.

He settles in the armchair in the living room and watches his daughter stack multi-colored blocks bedecked with different kanji. She constructs a perfectly symmetrical tower, and he thinks about architecture and design, about colleges and internships—

He shakes himself. There's time yet. There's plenty of time.

When the structure is complete, his daughter collects herself to her feet and goes over to him, leaning on his arm and considering him, her eyes bright and curious.

"Daddy," she says, "what's a Kira?"

When his wife comes in to announce that dinner's ready, she finds her husband holding his daughter to him as though nothing can ever pry them apart.


	12. Certainty

_Author's Note: Not dead! Just finally done with a massive humor fic that__'ll hopefully be appearing soon in an Inbox near you! :D  
_

* * *

CERTAINTY

Nate River is surprisingly perceptive for a boy who never ventures outside alone.

Maybe it's the books he tears through—figuratively, of course—on the rare occasions that the toys are put away. Maybe it's the glimpses of network television between stints of news coverage. Or maybe it's just that human emotions are patterned and predictable enough that a runt of a white-haired genius (mad scientist hair? He's always wondered) can apply his systematic brilliance to the ostensibly inexplicable problem of the human heart.

Whatever the case, he understands Mello, very likely better than Mello understands himself. He thinks this is because Mello exists in extremes, and extremes are measureable. He can track their trajectories. He can gauge the way that passion oscillates on the spectrums that span love and hatred or glee and rage, and he can do it with precision.

He doubts that Mello understands that.

He thinks about Mello a lot in his spare time, and he thinks about the way they will not look at each other—no, on second thought, they will. But just for a moment. Just for a taste.

He's prepared when that moment creeps close (creeps near?) and, wordless, he watches the train shudder along the track. He doesn't turn until it is almost too late, until the moment has duly and definitively arrived. The live feeds from the countless cameras could tell him when, but he doesn't need them.

He extends the photograph, and before Mello snatches it and swivels on his overstated heel, their eyes meet—just for a moment. Just for a taste.

A moment is enough for a genius, of course, to confirm each and every one of his diverse and sundry suppositions. Nate River's hypotheses are rarely wrong.

The one thing Mello has always sought for without knowing, always reached for without seeing, always ached for without feeling, is someone with no regard for his wits and his worth, someone who doesn't mind the sliver of midriff between pools of leather, someone who couldn't care less about the carnage that has claimed his face.

Near doesn't know if he is that someone. (The uncertainty is strange.)

But he knows that the _Dear Mello_ he traced out on the back of the old snapshot is necessary in a way that Mello probably won't even fully comprehend.

He returns his attention to the locomotive puttering over plastic rails, humming a little to himself.

For Mello _is_ dear to him. Near, you might say, to his heart.

And of that he is quite certain.


	13. Enlightenment

_A/N: Alternatively titled: "WHEN DIALOGUE ATTACKS." And my Heavens, the potty-mouthage. Avert your eyes if you're actually worried about the whole K+ thing. XD_

_Fond of this one. :)  
_

* * *

ENLIGHTENMENT

The phone burbled. Matt, sprawled on a park bench to watch the orange-tinted world, flicked it open and raised it to his ear.

"What?" he demanded.

"You know," Mello remarked, "I've been doing some research."

Matt rolled his eyes. This again. "Enlighten me, O Researching One."

"Smoking can make you impotent," Mello reported smugly.

Matt glanced absently at the cigarette balanced between his first two fingers. "I'm not too worried."

"You can't have kids if you're impotent, shithead."

"Overwhelmingly flattered as I am that you're concerned about my progeny," Matt noted dryly, "unless you're gonna have 'em, I don't want 'em in the first place."

"Oh, har har."

"Really," Matt insisted earnestly, "science is getting pretty advanced nowadays; I'm sure they could—"

"Fuck you," Mello cut in. "Go ahead and smoke another after this one."

"I will," Matt confirmed. "And another after that."

"Die of emphysema, for all I care," Mello muttered.

"Workin' on it," Matt replied cheerfully. "How's the Type II Diabetes coming along?"

"Well, thanks. Got your lung X-ray yet?"

"Yeah, and the scar tissue spells out 'Badass.' Is there a term for chain-chocolate consumption?"

Matt imagined Mello nodding, yellow hair swinging as he moved. "On the streets they're calling it 'non-fatal.'"

"Really?" Matt pursed his lips. "Last I heard, it was 'PMSing.'"

"Well, when I was talking to your mother last n—"

Mello stopped, and there was a long silence.

"Hello?" Matt prompted uncertainly.

"Yeah," Mello replied. "I was just… I dunno."

"What?"

"I just had this image, like—of me sitting in one of those shitty-ass plastic chairs at the hospital, chain-chocolate consuming, and you lying there with lung cancer, all weak and white and fucked up from chemo and shit."

This silence dwarfed its predecessor.

"That's just fucking depressing," Matt decided.

"I know," Mello replied gloomily.

"Look," Matt sighed. "If it makes you feel better, this'll be the last one for today."

Mello forced the first half of a laugh. "The boundlessness of your generosity never ceases to amaze."

"Tell it to your therapist," Matt suggested blithely.

"You _are_ my therapist," Mello retorted.

"Fair point. Is that all?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Is there any real food around there?"

Mello snorted. "Hell if I know."

"Figures," Matt sighed. "I'll be back in a couple hours."

"Hurry your cancerous ass up," Mello ordered.

"Why?"

"Because I love you, imbecilic bastard that you are."

"I love you too, you stupid motherfucker."

"Later, Matt."

"'Bye, Mello."

Matt snapped his phone shut. He then made the mistake of surveying his surroundings.

A soccer mom was staring at him with saucer-sized eyes and a mortified expression.

He grinned at her. "What?"


	14. White

_Author's Note: For Jenwryn, who makes this pairing breathtaking every time. :)_

* * *

WHITE

Near is always—_always_—dressed in white, like something out of a Renaissance painting, all cherubs and clouds. Mello would bet the whole damn stash of chocolate on the top shelf of his closet that Near wore white to his parents' funerals. He'd bet it that Near would wear white to his _own_—lie there in a white-satin-lined casket with his indecipherable face still, his features eraser smudges on a blank sheet. He's like a painting with no color, like a bandage soaked in chloroform, like a curtain ghosting in the wind, and Mello is sick and goddamn _tired_ of it. Tired of the ice, tired of the indifference, and tired of the implication of purity that he _knows_ belies a devil's mind behind those dead gray eyes.

And maybe that's why, when the playroom clears, he grabs Near's white lapels in both hands, shoves him heedlessly up against the wall, and lays bites instead of kisses down the pallid sweep of the boy's neck, not stopping when Near whimpers, not stopping when he writhes—because he wants to darken him, wants to sully him, wants to ruin him, wants to _hurt_ him, wants to make him _real_.

Maybe it's because he just wants to see if Near bleeds red like everybody else.


	15. Safe

_Author's Note: I've been updating these chronologically until now, but I figured I ought to put up a nice Mello-y one for Mello's birthday today. :)_

* * *

SAFE

He used to wake up in the middle of the night, with the moon lifting the bottom of the blinds, peeking discretely under and sharing secrets with the pale yellow light that seeped through the crack beneath the door. Between the two of them, there was just enough illumination to make the shadows insidious—and just enough that Mello could accordingly pull free of the tangled sheets on his bed, cross the floor without too much incident, and crawl in next to Matt. And Matt would snuff a toothpaste-flavored breath into his face and sometimes blink big dark eyes, and then curl a little closer so that Mello could ground himself by touching the smooth bare skin and the cotton folds of a striped tee-shirt.

He'd touch Matt's face, too, and run his thumbs lightly along the soft curve of the eyelids, bristly black lashes brushing against his fingertips.

He thought that was as safe as you could feel, and later, once the sky had fallen and the walls had crumpled in, after a little button under his thumb made the soul-bound wreckage real—he held onto the dimming recollection, tracing it, learning it, clinging to it, until… now. Because now he didn't have to.

Matt's tee-shirt had the word "FATALITY" on it in bloody red letters that Mello would never admit made him uncomfortable, but he ignored them in favor of breathing in the laundry detergent's fragrant signature.

Because now Matt had both arms around him, and _this_ was as safe as the world ever got.


	16. Flowers

_A/N: ...this and the next few were written in, uh, late November and early December... and I just suck at uploading. XD_

* * *

FLOWERS

Misa Amane's various embellishments tinkled like breaking glass. Silver chains jingled, jewelry clinked, and layered bangles hopped with every sprightly step, her heels clicking on the sidewalk until she reached the grass, which muffled the sound. Bent blades unfolded again in her wake, rising slowly as if to watch her go.

She trekked up a low hill and sat cross-legged in the sun, pleated skirt whispering over fishnet stockings, never thinking about how many potential passerby might catch a glimpse of her bright red underwear. She didn't even notice the possibility of the thing, because Misa's world wasn't like that.

It was better that way.

Her black-lacquered nails glinted in the warm sunlight as she reached out, fingers closing around the frail stem of a daisy with its face raised to the sky. She plucked it from its berth, the feeble, half-curled roots sliding free of the moist earth, and looked down at the bright buttery center and the dainty curvature of cloud-colored petals.

She pulled one of those petals off and dropped it to the grass.

"He loves me," she murmured. She tore at another. "He loves me not."

He did… he didn't… he did… he…

The daisy had only six petals to offer. It looked almost apologetic, cradled in her hand, the center naked and forlorn now, bereft of all of its petal-friends.

Some part of her had known. Some part of her had always known.

Misa set the stem down among the fallen petals. Then she extended her hand again, eyes on a new prize, and pulled up a dandelion. Holding its wildly fuzzy head just beyond her lips, she closed her eyes, made a wish, and blew.


	17. God

GOD

It's interesting—though none too surprising, he supposes—that Teru Mikami can catalogue his life in a thousand pinpoints. He can mark every broken pair of glasses, every scar that has faded with time and care; every instance of powerlessness, the roaring silence of defeat broken by disbelieving gratitude; every conversation with his mother, the last one most of all.

"_Sometimes you have to let injustice stand. You can't right every wrong, sweetheart. You can't fight every battle and expect to win."_

He can put his finger on the moment he renounced her, and the moment the forsaken ones were eliminated in a single blessed swoop.

He knows the name and face of every small-time sinner he condemned with smooth words and hard evidence.

And of course he remembers regaining his faith.

The notebook, the gift from God. The impossible hope, the boundless sprawl of so many beautiful opportunities before him that he couldn't differentiate one from the other. Everything had changed. The world was new. He had a purpose, a goal, a _reason_, a golden truth and a weapon against the forces of injustice, a weapon that would never misfire. Of course he offered up half of his prospective remaining years. Half a life with the power to enforce the right, to fix the world, to heal it, was immeasurably better than an _eternity_ of the old way—of extricating justice from the tomb of bureaucracy, the mausoleum swathed in cobwebs of red tape.

He gave everything to Kira. He gave everything to God.

And now…

Now Kira-sama is just a man.

Now Kira-sama is a failure.

Now Kira-sama is the kind of person he has spent his life trying to destroy.

How did this happen? How has he sacrificed his life for _nothing_? For this _charlatan_? For a clever boy in a nice suit, an egoistic child with madness in his eyes?

Teru wants to die. It's all over. It's all ruined, all destroyed. The Sistine Chapel ceiling is crumbling, and fresco rains down on him where he stands.

It's over. It's dead. He's given his life, his self, his world, his love, _everything_—he's committed all of it to a stupid boy's self-aggrandizing dream. He has poured the entirety of his being into a lie.

Close up, he can see that the resplendent sun of his dark universe is nothing more than a garish fluorescent light.

It burns his eyes.

He wishes they'd release his hands. He wishes he could hide his face.

He has failed. His God has failed him.


	18. Observation

_A/N: My apartment is across the street and down a little ways from a theater, and I looked out and saw a guy smoking. Whoops. XD_

* * *

OBSERVATION

Mello pushed his computer aside, stood, arched his back, and cracked his knuckles. His neck made a series of slightly alarming popping sounds as he tilted his head to one side and then to the other.

He wandered to the dark square of the window, the blue-black night cut by neon streetlights and pale façades fading out of being. The Venetian blinds were so cracked and broken from the baking sun and the blithe neglect that he wondered why nobody had thrown them away; absently he remembered the halfhearted shelter the paltry things offered from dawns that hunted down a pair of fitfully-sleeping boys altogether too soon. Through the broken shuttering and the hostile angles of the fire escape, he looked idly at the sidewalk five floors below.

Orange flared hotly, a misplaced, misguided star stranded in the broad brushstrokes of the shadows. White smoke fled red lips, huddled for a moment in the stagnant air, and then dissipated and was gone.

Mello closed his eyes, clasped his crucifix, and prayed to God and every saint he knew that Mail Jeevas would make it out of this alive.


	19. Frail

_A/N: I like this one. :)_

* * *

FRAIL

She had always been frail. But it was a beautiful thing, the pale and peculiar delicacy of her white hands and the gentle waves of her sunrise-yellow hair, and he cherished it as he cherished everything about her. She loved him before she knew about his money, and she insisted, with a surge of the opalescent fire that gleamed in her silver eyes, on a small ring, a small ceremony, one small life made of their two. She had wild, incredible, ingenious plans, and her voice grew softer and softer the more excited she became until she whispered with her lips to his ear.

He had used to slide his fingers nightly through the silk of her hair, coaxing the snarled strands into harmony, breathing in her voice. He stroked it still as she lay fading into the white sheets in the sterilized hell of the hospital bed.

He had always bemusedly thought of her as a visitor, as a guest, as a half-celestial gift that heaven would have to take back someday. He wasn't much for sentimentality, but he was starting to believe it.

The cancer opened its cool arms, and all he could do was hold her tightly until it won.

She smiled at the last, as a wasted finger slid from his grip, the simple ring greater than its circumference now, and closed her eyes.

For many years he thought he'd forgotten how to feel.

And then he saw her eyes again—no, not hers, not the same, but… right.

Wide gray eyes, curiously appraising his face from behind a haphazard curtain of hair like pitch, endowed with an unnatural intelligence and an insatiable interest, and he knew.

As he touched the frayed wool coat over a shoulder already bent, already employed to hide the boy to which it belonged, and took a tiny mittened hand in his; as the wind nipped his ears and snowflakes melted on his cheeks—he felt warm.

And he knew, with a quiet, dawning certainty, that this was right.


	20. Flukes

FLUKES

He thinks about it, after the second time they crash together with fists drawn and hackles raised. Flukes don't happen twice, and he wants to know. He sneaks glances at the unmoving, unorthodox profile like a child stealing sweets, and a wayward tendril of his mind sketches a wide-eyed L with a head too big for his narrow shoulders and a shock of hair he'll never quite grow into, standing with a thumb to his lips and gazing longingly at the cookie jar balanced atop the refrigerator.

He drags himself back to the original train of thought before he can imagine the method by which L acquires the thing, because he would get it somehow.

It's watching L lick compulsively at his new split lip that makes Light realize—realize that they fight because words are inadequate; because actions speak louder; because there is something horribly, desperately intimate about the way their flesh meets, seeking to break.

Because it's disgusting how much he loves the bruises that blossom, stark purple, on L's white cheeks.

Because he loves the undeniable evidence that he was there, and the proof that L can bleed.

He shivers happily and stifles a grim smile, because it would make him look like he was up to something.


	21. Necessity

_Author's Note: Not dead. Still a Watari fangirl. The world is in order._

* * *

NECESSITY

He has regretted the necessity of the stairs for longer than he would like to admit.

There's a strange majesty in the upright lines of a staircase, and there's a warm comfort in the frayed runner that clings to it, but all the tennis in his youth has not been kind to his knees, and Quillish is wincing by the time he reaches the second floor.

He pauses, leaning against the wall for leverage, to knead the aching joints gently, each in turn. They've got a few good years left in them yet.

Down the hall he goes. The house creaks sympathetically, and he smiles.

He smiles a little wider as he gives the door—ajar, spilling a wedge of yellow light out onto the carpet—a careful push.

L, whose ten short years of intelligence put Quillish's decades to shame, is asleep on top of the latest printouts, a tall stack of case files beneath his cheek.

Quillish hopes they weren't printed _too_ recently, or L will have the evidence literally written on his face.

Backwards, as with so many things in this world.

A ballpoint pen has slipped from the boy's grip and lies, stranded and capless, in the pool of condensation around the crystal ice cream dish.

The ice cream, of course, is gone, as are the sugar cubes and the toffees.

Quillish wonders what the boy dreams, behind the feathery curtain of is hair, beyond the cool sharpness of the wide gray eyes. He wonders what a mind like that would conjure in the night.

His knees protest as he lifts the child and carries his burden to the bed. L stirs but doesn't wake, and Quillish thinks they'll want to work on learning to sleep more lightly, because there is no such thing as a surplus of advantages.

They'll work on it.

But not now.

Now, Quillish stacks the dishes, wipes the desktop, caps the pen, and strokes L's wild hair twice before he turns out the light.


	22. Flight

_Author's Note: Happy birthday, Nearikins! Have a drabble I vaguely sketched out at three in the morning and wrote today. XD_

_Quasi-incidentally, this is the one-year anniversary of my first-posted Death Note fic. O_o_

* * *

FLIGHT

When Near was small—small_er_—he played with puzzles, wooden blocks, and trains, and he always dragged a plastic armada into the tub when it was his turn for a bath.

But he didn't do any of those things without a rational motivation. Above all else, Near believes in reason. Cause and effect is his doctrine, and logic is his dogma.

He assembled the puzzles because their disparate pieces fit into a perfect whole. He built block towers towards the ceiling beams because he was just tall enough to stack sixteen cubes. He kept his trains and his little ships in beautiful condition because their full-sized counterparts might someday take him away—because a train or a boat could take you anywhere. Because toy ones were big enough to carry his imagination.

Once, when it was late, and he was tired, and his self-control was weak, he had told L about the places he knew that trains and boats could go. He had talked about the things he'd seen in atlases and the full-color pictures in his history books, about turquoise seas and endless forests and monuments to millennia of human achievement.

L had smiled and nodded, and the next time he left, he came back bearing the kit that would become Near's first model airplane.

It is that triumph—L gazing amusedly at the strings of glue trailing from his fingers; and Mello helping without any snide commentary, because L was there, and that was enough—that Near remembers now as he paints a Gothic _N_ onto the wing of his F-22.

He smiles a little, and he wonders if there are crime rings to obliterate in Cairo.

The world is waiting.


	23. Snow

_Auth__or's Note: It amuses me that I don't even know my roommate's birthday, but I write something for Matt's. Priorities._

* * *

SNOW

There was snow on the ground, and Mello was watching new flakes fall. It was weird, watching the snow—it wasn't like rain, which drummed on the roof and pattered at the windows and made its presence known. Snow snuck up on you and hemmed you in, changing and concealing things you'd used to know, and, to tell the much-suppressed and hidden truth, it kind of creeped him out.

He huddled a little smaller in the worn denim of his jacket, feeling the chill radiating off the windowpane. There was a mug lined with dried cocoa dregs on the desktop, and uneven footsteps had just begun to gallop up the stairs.

"Mel!" Matt panted, the single syllable carrying him from the top step of the staircase all the way across the bedroom's threshold. "Come on!"

Mello looked over his shoulder. Matt's hair trailed in his bright eyes, and his cheeks were shot with pink from racing up from the dining room. His shirt was wrinkled—this was the new one Roger had given him, black-and-white-striped and big enough to grow into, which meant it was sliding partway off of his shoulder now. He had a decorated envelope—Linda's contribution—in both hands, and one of his thumbs fidgeted madly, worrying the shiny ribbon she'd wrapped around it half a dozen times.

"What flavor's the cake?" Mello asked.

"Chocolate," Matt said. "'Cause it's what you like, and I don't care."

"I'll be there in a minute," Mello told him, and he meant it, and Matt could tell. The redhead smiled so that the corners of his eyes crinkled, and then he headed back down the stairs, his reckless, ungainly limbs taking them two at a time.

Mello slipped off of his bed, knelt, and started sorting through the mess of little secrets crammed beneath his bed. Shoved between the shoebox of stolen puzzle pieces and the book Wammy had given him to read on his first night here (_The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_) sat a poorly-wrapped bundle containing the fruit of four months' low chocolate rations.

Mello didn't really know why a pair of silver goggles with orange lenses had jumped out from the storefront's window as something Matt ought to have, but he wasn't one to argue with serendipity.

He made his way down the stairs, one hand on the railing, the other cradling his gift, and thought maybe orange goggles would keep the snow out of Matt's eyes.


	24. Decisions

_Author's Note: Due to being swamped in o-fic, this is the first time I've been late for a big DN birthday; sorry, Lighto._

_The above is in contention for the most pathetic sentence I have ever typed._

_I will respond to old reviews and things later when I suck less; that's a promise. XD_

* * *

DECISIONS

Light flattened one of the curling ends of masking tape with his toe.

"Are you sure about this?" he asked.

Solemnly, L nodded. "It is the only way to decide, Yagami-kun."

Light wasn't convinced. "How about 'Rock, Paper, Scissors'?"

L's hair fluttered as he shook his head. "That method invariably results in the loser demanding the 'best out of three,'" he responded, "and thence the best out of five, seven, nine, and every prime number until someone intervenes with a distraction."

Frowning, Light noted, "You sound like you speak from personal experience."

L shrugged in a ripple of worn cotton and sharp bones. "We have to do it, Yagami-kun."

Light looked dubiously at the three equidistant strips of tape on the carpet. "Can't we flip a coin?"

L blinked at him disapprovingly. "And leave something so important to chance?"

At this point, Light honestly couldn't tell whether L was extremely invested in the outcome or extremely invested in mocking him.

"Fine," he muttered grudgingly.

At this concession, he and L wrapped their respective ends of the chain around their respective hands, and then they positioned Matsuda's tie—stolen when he'd passed out on the couch in the other room, to be knotted around the center of the chain—over the middle line of masking tape. Following a synchronized countdown from three, the tug-of-war commenced.

After five full minutes of hauling, heaving, yanking, straining, and sweating—and one notable scream of frustration, which Light was more than prepared to deny for the rest of his life—both combatants collapsed on the floor, panting heavily.

Light wished he had the energy to berate himself. Given that L was made of toothpicks, skin, sugar, and an improbable quantity of hair, it shouldn't have been a contest in the first place, but the detective fought like an animal at times like these. His simple stubbornness had evened out Light's advantage yet again, and neither of them had made any headway: the battle had proved tragically indecisive.

Once L regained his breath, he used it to sigh feelingly.

"I suppose," he murmured, raising his thumb to his mouth, inky hair spilling over the carpet, "that neither of us will get to choose which wallpaper should go in the bedroom."

Light's hopes for the tactful gray-on-off-white fleur-de-lis pattern had been cruelly dashed.

The chain links jingled as he wiped sweat off of his forehead with the heel of his hand.

"I guess I can live with that," he resolved. "As long as Matsuda doesn't get to pick."


	25. Boycott

_A/N: Please accept my mostly-sincere apologies._

* * *

BOYCOTT

"Uh oh."

Mello gives him a quick, almost fond glare. "What do you mean, 'Uh oh'?"

"You've got that look," Matt says.

Mello frowns. "Pray tell precisely what 'look' you mean."

Matt makes sure his eyes are massive, limpid, and desperately innocent before he replies. "The one that means you're either planning world domination or developing lyrics to a Lady Gaga parody that starts out 'Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa-oa, oh, I'm gonna boycott pants.'"

There is a long, long silence. Mello's mouth has fallen open a bit.

"Computer hacker," Matt says, helpfully.

Mello's mouth snaps shut, and he bares his teeth. "You promised you weren't going to dig into any files in the folder marked _Private_."

"Yeah," Matt says, "just like you promised you weren't going to eat any of the chocolate Fox biscuits I bought online."

Mello seethes for a moment before he settles again with a tantalizingly pink-lipped pout. "_Fine_. We're even. You fucker."

But he doesn't have that look anymore.

Matt hides his grin and gets back to work.


End file.
